Ninus

“ Is it not so with us all, from the Great King to the spearman that marches by his chariot? Even Ninus will chafe and roar and lash himself into rage like the lion of the desert, if the merest trifle runs contrary to his whim. ”

“ Mayhap the captive lied, seeking to draw away another force from the baggage trains, when hidden mountaineers might pour into the valley, wrecking the machines of war and dealing a fatal blow to the plans of siege. On the other hand, should Ninus, in his overconfidence of strength, become entangled in the narrow gorge, then of a certainty Assyria's fate was sealed.
Menon faltered. A haunting whisper worried at his ears:
"Let Ninus die! Wherefore should a mortal shield an enemy who houndeth him in a cause of cruelty? Leave him to his fate! Race back to Nineveh and the goal of a heart's desire!" ”

“ To Ninus praises greater still, for Asshur watched while Ninus wrought the deed!"
Amid rejoicings the stele was blessed by the High Priest Nakir-Kish, while the wine cup circled and a chant was heard from a train of hidden priests—a chant which now was taken up in the temples throughout vast Nineveh, and the gods smelt sacrifice from a thousand altar stones. A jingling tinkle then arose, when from right and left two lines of dancers tripped into the hall, to bow before the King, to rise and glide in rhythmic steps through the measures of their dance. ”

“ Hear the decree of Ninus, king and god,
That Artavan, the brother of the queen,
Shall freely live, and die by no man’s hand!
(Silence. The voice of Khosrove below)
Khos. Assyria, speak!
Nin. I, Ninus, so decree!
(Staggers back toward front as all press to rear to see the troops go out. Semiramis, Artavan and Sola stand together gazing out)
Sem. O, Khosrove! See—he rides—away—away!
(Leans forward waving her scarf. Ninus, alone in front, goes toward his chamber, falls on the steps overpowered with rage and lifts his clenched hands)
Nin. O, vengeance! Vengeance for a king! ”

“ Nay, King Ninus is a god whose wisdom marketh the works of lesser men, and he smileth because of them. Therefore, since Ninus knoweth all, he will treasure up this jest till such a time as Menon cometh unto Nineveh, and will rally him in the sight of all the court. ”

“ Wherefore should he scowl, this favorite of the gods, Chief Governor of Syria, a warrior beloved of men, a youth watched covertly from many a latticed screen till his careless passing caused a yearning sigh? Wherefore should he mutter curses in his palm and dig his heel into the sands? Had he not on yestereve received a scroll from the King himself, wherein that monarch praised him for his services afield, and, more, for his crafty rule? Had Ninus not made offer of a high reward when Nineveh should be builded at the end of two short years? ”

“ King Ninus himself sat down upon the river bank where the waters of the Tigris and the Khusur join, and here he wrought his plans. A band of men went northward to the forest lands, felled trees, and split them into boards with which they fashioned a fleet of wide flat boats. These boats, propelled by sweeps and pushing-poles, were manned by Phoenicia's sons, for Assyria knew no more of ship-craft than hillsmen know the camel's back; yet Ninus employed the skill of others in his self appointed task. ”

“ A conquered people, so long as they paid him tribute and kept their covenants, were left in peace, their gods untroubled, their temples sacred to their own desires; but should they revolt, then Ninus and his grim, unpitying host returned, to leave their cities smouldering heaps upon the plain, the heads of their chiefs set up on poles by way of warning to all who entertained a similar unrest. ”

“ Ninus nodded, and the youth went on: "In all things, save one alone, I have set the King's desires above the yearnings of my will. In childhood I bore his wine cup, obedient to his lightest nod. From him I learned the arts of war, and served him through conquests of four score lands, sparing neither strength nor blood to bring him victory. When Nineveh was rising from the earth I journeyed down into Arabia, measured my sword with the Prince Boabdul, and sealed a treaty which gave Assyria peace along the border lands. ”

“ As the sun slid down and the shadows of the hills crept out across the plains, King Ninus sat within his tent, while about him stood a score of his under-chiefs. Warriors they were of many lands which made Assyria's kingdom one, stern men of copper hue, half naked in the summer heat, gaunt of feature, lean and sinewy of limb. On the faces of many was stamped a look of weariness; on others anger, while the monarch wore his darkest scowl ”

“ Give me to Ninus—give me up to death,
And with a father and a brother lost,
Though thou wert worshipped ’mong thy country’s gods
Still thou couldst not be happy!
Sem. Sir—
Khos. But come,
And they are safe!
Sem. (Bewildered) What do I hear?
Khos. O, come!
Dost know what love is, daughter of Menones?
It is the fire that dead puts out the light
On every hearth, living makes all the world
One altar feeding incense unto Heaven! ”

“ Nineveh or Babylon with the temples of their gods, Ninus or Jupiter Belus, and their halls of Astarté and Semalt. These most people believe to be magnified by the dim haze of intervening ages, and the exaggerating page of history through which medium we behold them. ”

“ What the same author adds,961 that Ninus entered into an alliance with the king of the Arabs, and joined forces with him, is a piece of ancient tradition, which informs us, that the sons of Chus, and by consequence, the brothers of Nimrod, all settled themselves in Arabia, along the Persian gulf, from Havilah to the Ocean; and lived near enough to their brother to lend him succours, or to receive them from him. ”

“ NINUS, in Greek mythology, the eponymous founder of Nineveh (q.v.) , and thus the city itself personified. He was said to have been the son of Belos or Bel, to have conquered in seventeen years the whole of western Asia with the help of Ariaeus, king of Arabia, and to have founded the first empire. During the siege of Bactra he met Semiramis, the wife of one of his officers, Onnes, whom he took from her husband and married. ”

“ What need to starve in Bactria when plenty lieth along the Tigris and the Euphrates? Why break our teeth against a wall of stone when naught may come of it save a bleeding mouth? We storm a city, fling away a nation's wealth as though its coffers served a catapult! Our soldiers sicken at the lack of food and because of the bitterness of long defeat! If Ninus be in truth a god, then let him give this city into our hands ”

“ One day to their great delight they discovered a tiny crack in the wall between the two houses, through which they could hear each other speak. But a few words whispered through a chink in the wall could not satisfy two ardent lovers, and they tried to arrange a meeting. They would slip away one night unnoticed and meet somewhere outside the city. A spot near the tomb of Ninus was chosen, where a mulberry tree grew near a pleasant spring of water. ”

“ Likewise, the forests and the fields were swept for meat wherewith to feed the multitudes, for Ninus dipped into his treasures with a reckless hand, even as men in the drunkenness of joy will ever squander all their substance, regretting it sorely in the sober after-days. ”

“ Was the wife of an officer in the army of Ninus, king of Assyria, who being attracted by her beauty and art, married her after the death of her husband; an action of which according to some authors, he had soon reason to repent; for she having first brought over to her interest the principal men of the state, next prevailed on the infatuated Ninus to invest her five days with the sovereign power. ”

“ When Ninus invaded Media, Semiramis, who only waited for some opportunity to distinguish herself, insisted upon accompanying her husband, who, as one of the principal courtiers, held an important command in the invading army. The campaign was at first an uninterrupted series of successes. One city fell after another before the Assyrian hosts. But the army was suddenly checked in its onward career of victory before the impregnable walls of Bactria. The city was defended with such obstinate bravery that Ninus at last resolved to retreat. ”

“ At last they resolved to defy the cruel parents who thus wronged their love; to steal out one night in the concealing darkness, and fly together despite all opposition.
Outside the town, beside a little brook and shaded by a widespread mulberry tree, stood the tomb of Ninus. Here they agreed to meet at nightfall.
Impatiently they watched the sun sink slowly down the western sky and bathe in the western sea. Thisbe, with caution, unbarred her father's door and stole softly forth, veiling her face and hasting through the town to the spot where the tomb stood on the open plain. ”

“ With another chief they are but as sullen swine, undiligent, earning not their salt; yet under command of Asharal, who, in the strangeness of their hearts they love, no longer are they swine, but fighting men. Justice, therefore, cheateth Ninus, when craft will give him an hundred thousand allies to his strength. ”

“ Samiramis, daughter of the nymph Dercetis, was raised by doves and was the wife of King Ninus, after whose death she expanded Ninus' kingdom through warfare; she also made an attempt on India in an insufficiently successful campaign. She established the most beautiful city which there ever was, Babylon, on the River Euphrates. ”

“ This convulsion was probably occasioned by the successful revolt of the Medes under Arbaces, and the capture of Nineveh, about 950 B.C., which brought to an end the ancient dynasty of Ninus and Semiramis, after thirteen centuries of power, and established a new family on the throne. ”

“ The description of Quintus Curtius is no less illustrative of the Assyrian monuments. “The doryphori (a chosen body of spearmen) preceded the chariot, on either side of which were the effigies of the gods in gold and silver. The yoke was inlaid with the rarest jewels. From it projected two golden figures of Ninus and Belus, each a cubit in length.... The king was distinguished from all those who surrounded him, by the magnificence of his robes, and by the cidaris or mitre upon his head. By his side walked two hundred of his relations. ”

“ That which the ancients write is true regarding the institutions of the Persians, that any one who was about to become a king should be initiated into the magic rites, and that Ninus could not be more a king than a magus from that custom. The Persians received these sacred rites from the most ancient Chaldeans, and the latter called them Nergal, from two Hebrew words, nir and gal, which may mean either the fountain of fire or light, or fire or versatile light, and especially that inextinguishable fire which they watched in their holy places as the symbol of the sun. ”

“ Ctesias, who was nearly cotemporary with Xenophon, pretends to have extracted from the royal archives of the Medes, a chronology which carries back the origin of the Assyrian monarchy upwards of 800 years, putting at the head of their kings, that same Ninus, the son of Belus, whom Herodotus had made one of the Heraclides; and, at the same time, he attributes to Ninus and Semiramis conquests towards the west, of an extent absolutely incompatible with the Jewish and Egyptian history of the times in question [166] . ”

“ But there is a chasm in the history of this empire from the death of Ninias, the son of Ninus, of about 800 years. The history of this empire during this period can only be supplied by conjecture. The governments of these nations were monarchies, but that of the Hebrews in the earliest periods of their history, was patriarchal.
The idea of conquest appears to have grown out of the conflicting interests of the shepherd kings: and from what we learn of them, we ought not to associate in our minds with any of them an extent of territory beyond that of a large plantation or a few thousand acres. ”

“ It was during this campaign, says Diodorus Siculus, that Ninus first beheld Semiramis. Her precise legendary or mythical origin is obscure. Some writers aver that she was the daughter of the fish-goddess Ataryatis, or Derketo, and Oannes, the Babylonian god of wisdom, who has already been alluded to. Ataryatis was a goddess of Ascalon in Syria, and after birth her daughter Semiramis was miraculously fed by doves until she was found by one Simmas, the royal shepherd, who brought her up and married her to Onnes, or Menon, one of Ninus's generals. ”

“ The ancient Ninus or Nineveh was situated on the eastern bank of the Tigris, nearly opposite the modern town of Mousul or Mosul. Herodotus (i, 193) and Strabo (xvi, p. 737) both speak of it as being destroyed; but Tacitus (Ann. xii, 13) and Ammian. Marcell. (xviii, 7) mention it as subsisting. Its ruins had been long remarked (see Thevenot, Voyages, lib. i, ch. xi, p. 176, and Niebuhr, Reisen, vol. ii, p. 360) , but have never been examined carefully until recently by Rich, Ainsworth, and others: see Ritter, West-Asien, b. ”

“ Thus mused Ninus and washed his conscience of a stain, then turned to his eunuchs in a sharp command:
"Lift ye this man from the nails upon the wall; restore his breath with water from the cisterns, and his strength with wine. Bring garments wherewith to warm his flesh, and a salve to heal his wounds. Guard ever this doorway, bearing food and drink, for I charge ye that his body must not die, but live."
So the King came up from under the under-chambers of the citadel and caused a thousand torches to be set aflame ”